


The Stories We Write Together

by LostLeaf



Series: The Unfinished Symphonies [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Character Study, Drunk!Jacob, Feels, Fluff, M/M, Roth's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostLeaf/pseuds/LostLeaf
Summary: Jacob pays Maxwell a visit after a mission to intercept Starrick’s wine delivery, though it soon becomes clear that he may have sampled a little of the stolen cargo for himself…





	The Stories We Write Together

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thank you to those of you who encouraged me to do this! It’s amazing to know there are so many of you that still love RothFrye! These stories are dedicated to you <3
> 
> As promised, what follows will be a little series of oneshots and some outtakes that didn’t make it to my [other fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727432/chapters/15378706).
> 
> I’ll try and make updates as regularly as I can, and will keep going for as long as the inspiration lets me :)
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

 

**The Stories We Write Together**

 

Maxwell hears the thud by his bedroom window but he doesn’t open his eyes. Because even in the pitch-black dark of the midnight hour, he knows the patterns of his night-time visitor verbatim by now. Though even for a Master Assassin, Jacob’s stealth is unusually lacking tonight, and with all the grace of a herd of elephants, the boy manages to both trip over the armchair _and_ fall into the nightstand as he stumbles across the carpet towards Maxwell’s bed.

The strong smell of alcohol that wafts from Jacob’s coat as he fights with himself to remove it confirms Maxwell’s suspicions. He's as pissed as they come. And quite how he managed to scale the outside of the theatre to reach Maxwell’s bedroom quarters without breaking his neck is something that the Blighter leader would rather not think about. 

“Maxweeell…” Jacob says, trying his hardest to whisper and yet failing at it miserably.

The boy is a complete mess. But even when he’s three sheets to the wind and making fine work of muddying Maxwell’s expensive rugs as he trudges closer and throws off his boots, Maxwell can’t find it in himself to be anything but endeared by the disastrous sight that sways on the spot before him.

“Maxy….are yoou shleeping?”

“Yes, I am.” Maxwell says with a tease in his tone, deciding to play. “I’m sleeping quite deeply, thank you.”  

With his eyes closed, Maxwell rolls onto his back in the centre of the bed and folds his arms over the top of the scarlet bedsheets, keeping up the act, though it doesn’t last long, because he can’t help but smile at the disappointed little whine that Jacob gives as he slumps down onto the mattress beside him.

“But _I’m_ awake.”

“And you’re drunk.”

“No I’m not!”

”And you’re also a terrible liar, darling.”

Maxwell lifts his arm, and Jacob is quick to take it as an invitation to snuggle up against him, his head flopped on Maxwell’s chest, an arm, and then a leg hooked around Maxwell’s body. And Maxwell can’t bring himself to care when Jacob buries his face in the crook of his neck and gives a contented, but slightly damp sigh against his skin. Nor is Maxwell repulsed by the curious cocktail of smells that greets him rather abruptly from Jacob’s worse for wear clothes—an interesting mix of steaming fresh horseshit, recently spent gunpowder, and the filthy, urine-stained backstreets that line the banks of the Thames. It’s a smell that proceeds to fill his lungs as he breathes in deep against his Assassin’s rain-damp hair, and tells him, along with Jacob’s uncharacteristic silence, that the mission Maxwell sent him on might not have gone entirely as planned.

“Successful night, was it, dear?”

“I got my target, if that’s what you mean. The switch was made. Starrick’s wine delivery is no more.” Jacob’s voice is unusually slow, each sentence overly articulated as he so obviously attempts to coerce his tongue into not slurring his words. And this time Maxwell doesn't hold back his laughter when observing how stubbornly hard the boy is trying to appear sober. That very same stubbornness is a trait that Maxwell knows himself to possess, but still, it never fails to amuse him when he notices it at work in Jacob.

“Wonderful, darling. And where is the wine now—if you don’t mind me asking?”

“In your basement, as agreed.”

“ _All_ of it?”

“Yes, all five cases handed over to that peculiar man of yours… _Leewiiiss.”_

Maxwell decides to let that one go, and instead focuses on the matter in hand. “Five?” He rakes his fingers through Jacob’s hair and grips there. “I was under the impression that he’d ordered _six_ cases.” He attempts to lift Jacob’s head to look at him, but Jacob only grumbles and resists his pull, and squirms as he buries his face deeper into Maxwell’s neck.

“Jacob…” 

There’s a long moment of silence in which Jacob does a lot of sighing and shuffling beside him. Then with a huff and an overly dramatic groan he gives up, and pushes himself upright on his elbow, his cheeks all flushed and rosy, and wearing an adorably sheepish grin that does next to nothing to hide his guilt and of which Maxwell sees straight through (just like he always does).

“Alright…” Jacob puffs out a little exasperated breath, then sucks in a couple more. “There was this…incident.”

“An incident, dear?” Maxwell plays along, feigning his ignorance as he plays with the short hairs that line the nape of Jacob’s neck, stroking them in reassurance by habit.

“Well…you see, there was this Blighter. And a carriage. And then another carriage and another Blighter. And a narrow street with a sharp bend that I didn’t see coming…and…well—it seemed such a shame to waste it.”

“Ah-ha! Well then—that explains why you smell like the back end of a Whitechapel brewery.” Maxwell gives Jacob’s sides a playful squeeze, which in turn makes Jacob collapse against Maxwell’s chest with a yelp of protest, and he scrunches his hands in Maxwell’s nightclothes as he tangles his limbs back around him again.

“You knew all along!” He groans.

“My dear, of course I knew! Just look at the state of you—it was hardly a great mystery, was it?”

“I only had one bottle. I’m not drunk…” Maxwell laughs at that, and then harder still when he hears the muffled “ _much”_ that Jacob mutters into his nightclothes.

“No, of course you’re not, darling.”  

“Shut up, you.”

With a pout that he struggles to hold in place, Jacob leans up to press a kiss to Maxwell’s neck, then another to his chin and a third to his jaw. It’s sloppy, and it’s wet, and it’s a tactic he has used to shut Maxwell up before. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But tonight Maxwell concedes the win, as any plans he has of teasing Jacob further are fast dissolving, the playful comeback on the tip of his own tongue somehow stolen, his words all but lost in the presence of those lips against his skin.

With a shiver on his breath, Maxwell lifts Jacob’s chin with his thumb and tilts his head back so that he can kiss him properly, and sees to it that he rightly does. Jacob clings to him as their lips connect and their tongues meet, and hums a happy sound in his throat as he rolls back into the bedsheets and pulls Maxwell along with him. He holds Maxwell tight, so very tight and so very close, like he always does when they kiss—as though he’s expecting Maxwell to push him away or ask him to leave. Both of which Maxwell has never done and will never likely do. Yet still Jacob holds on and doesn’t let go. As unconvinced as he always is. And as insecure as he always seems. 

They kiss for a long moment, kiss deeply and mostly unhurried, until the long day begins to catch up with them, and their shared exhaustion slows the efforts of their movements. Until Jacob’s occasional whines for more fade into lazy mumbles, and his desperate grip on Maxwell’s nightshirt finally relaxes in its intensity, if only a little.

Maxwell is always the first to break the kiss, and tonight is no exception. With a sated smile, he pulls back for air and brushes his thumb across Jacob’s parted lips, watching with curious fascination how Jacob instinctively opens his mouth to suck the tip inside and runs his tongue down the length of it. Maxwell allows it to happen for a brief moment, enjoying the erotic memories of their past encounters that the sensation conjures. Then, along with several loud protests from Jacob, Maxwell removes his thumb and brings it to his own lips to mirror the sentiment, taking his time as he savours the heady mix of their combined taste, and his body warms as his tastebuds dance to the symphony of _their_ song.

It’s a taste Maxwell knows he’ll never come to tire of, though tonight it holds the added sweetness of a job well done.

“Mmm, tell me,” he pauses again to lick his lips, letting the flavour develop on his tongue. “Was it red or white?”

“White.”

“Ah—well that explains it. Too much sugar and not enough body. The man never did have good taste in wine.”

Maxwell’s next breath is all but taken by how beautiful Jacob looks as his head drops back into the pillows and he laughs long and loud, with his eyes half-open and his face all red and sleepy, and his hair pushed back and matted in a spectacular mess (though _that_ , Maxwell admits, is partly his own doing).  

And Maxwell wonders to himself, as he gazes down at him. He wonders, given all the horrible things he has done in his miserable no-good life, how on earth he managed to get so lucky. Wonders what a wretched old man like him did to deserve the handsome young thing that is lying tangled in his bedsheets, gazing back up at him in a way that Maxwell knows he shouldn’t read too deeply into. 

Because whenever he does it brings another question to Maxwell’s lips. One he knows he’ll never ask, and perhaps is better off not knowing the answer to. And yet it _is_ answered. It’s answered in the way he catches Jacob staring at him when he thinks Maxwell isn’t looking, and in the accompanying blush that always colours Jacob’s cheeks when he realises he’s been found out. It’s answered in the way that Jacob turns up at Maxwell’s door each and every day, sometimes without reason, but always without fail, and in the way he hesitates in that very same doorway before he leaves again each night, looking for all the excuses under the setting sun not to go.

And yes, Maxwell knows that it would be reckless to think that something _more_ could come from their dangerous liaison. Theirs is already a deadly and unpredictable life, and who knows what will happen when Starrick finds out that Maxwell has betrayed him.

So, for now Maxwell’s only aim is to enjoy the time they have together, no matter how long or short that time may be, or how loudly his heart reminds him that he’s already in too deep.

To live for the moment. To have a little fun with the ‘Bravest Man in London’.

Because endings are almost always a messy business. And any thoughts they have of their own grand finale remain unspoken, with neither party all that willing to learn their closing lines.

And so he gladly allows it when Jacob pulls him back down for a kiss that’s as gentle as it is tender, and when the sleepy Assassin then snuggles back down against him and wraps Maxwell’s arm around his waist and holds him tight.  

And with his head growing heavy as it rests on Maxwell’s chest, Maxwell hears by the gentle snores and the soft, wine-stained breaths that warm the patch of fabric that sits over his foolish heart, that Jacob is already sleeping by the time Maxwell has arranged the bedsheets to accommodate them both. And though his own eyes have also grown weary, when he finally lets them close Maxwell knows he’ll likely not sleep tonight. Visions of plays unfinished and manuscripts unread haunt his tormented mind as his fingers idly lace through Jacob’s hair.

Distraction eventually comes as his thoughts drift into tomorrow, then back to the steady warmth that sleeps soundly in his arms. With a smile, he thinks of the headache the boy will have come morning, and makes a mental note to send Lewis out early for some laudanum to soothe the pain, and some new soaps and oils for a nice warm bath. Perhaps even a hearty breakfast to settle Jacob’s stomach before he sets off on his way.

Though Maxwell knows that he’ll only come back again.

And hopes that tomorrow will bring more stories for them to tell.

Because when the dark night falls and the boy returns, Maxwell looks forward to telling him the one about Crawford Starrick’s expression—the _‘Great Tale of the Templar Luncheon’_ that Maxwell himself has been invited to. And he’ll relish in telling Jacob of the wonderful spoils reaped from his very own handiwork. Of the very moment the horror, and then raging _indignation_ came over the Grand Master’s face when he realised that the expensive wine he had just served to his many distinguished guests and associates, had in fact been replaced by the (not so) finest river water that the Thames had to offer.

_And what a story that one will be, my dear. The stuff of legends!_

And with that thought in his mind and the smile the image brings him, Maxwell is surprised to find that tonight, at least, sleep comes rather easily after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have a lot of scenes written where Jacob is drunk and Max has to look after him :) 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! If you'd like to leave me feedback it's always appreciated and helps me improve.


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